Famous Hollywood Director Peter Bogdanovich (Targets, The Last Picture Show) weighed in a few months back about a disturbing trend he had noticed in the current crop of movies.
The Hollywood Reporter has the story:
People go to a movie to have a good time, and they get killed. It’s a horrible, horrible event. It makes me sick that I made a movie about it.
We made Targets 44 years ago. It was based on something that happened in Texas, when that guy Charles Whitman shot a bunch of people after killing his mother and his wife. Paramount bought it, but then was terrified by it when Martin Luther King was killed and Bobby Kennedy was killed. The studio didn’t want to release the film at all. So they released it with a pro-gun-control campaign, but that made the picture seem like a documentary to people, and it didn’t do too well.
It was meant to be a cautionary fable. It was a way of saying the Boris Karloff kind of violence, the Victorian violence of the past, wasn’t as scary as the kind of random violence that we associate with a sniper — or what happened last weekend. That’s modern horror. At first, some of the people [at The Dark Knight Rises] thought it was part of the movie. That’s very telling.
Violence on the screen has increased tenfold. It’s almost pornographic. In fact, it is pornographic. Video games are violent, too. It’s all out of control. I can see where it would drive somebody crazy.
I’m in the minority, but I don’t like comic book movies. They’re not my cup of tea. What happened to pictures like How Green Was My Valley or even From Here to Eternity? They’re not making those kind of movies anymore. They are either making tentpole pictures based on comic books or specialty pictures that you pray someone will go see.
The fact that these tentpole movies are all violent comic book movies doesn’t speak well for our society.
Obviously, there is violence in the world, and you have to deal with it. But there are other ways to do it without showing people getting blown up. One of the most horrible movies ever made was Fritz Lang’s M, about a child murderer. But he didn’t show the murder of the child. The child is playing with a rubber ball and a balloon. When the killer takes her behind the bushes, we see the ball roll out from the bushes. And then he cuts to the balloon flying up into the sky. Everybody who sees it feels a different kind of chill up their back, a horrible feeling. So this argument that you have to have violence shown in gory details is not true. It’s much more artistic to show it in a different way.
Today, there’s a general numbing of the audience. There’s too much murder and killing. You make people insensitive by showing it all the time. The body count in pictures is huge. It numbs the audience into thinking it’s not so terrible. Back in the ’70s, I asked Orson Welles what he thought was happening to pictures, and he said, “We’re brutalizing the audience. We’re going to end up like the Roman circus, live at the Coliseum.” The respect for human life seems to be eroding.
I disagree with the distinguished director concerning a few points.
Movies based on comic book heroes aren’t a cause of violence per se. When Christopher Reeve starred as Superman, there was not an outbreak of violence reported, nor has there been one after the current Marvel Superheroes Movies, including The Avengers.
The difference between those movies and The Batman Trilogy? They weren’t dark in tone. They were uplifting. Sure, there was plenty of violence in them, but, it happened to “the bad guys”, as a comeuppance.
The Batman movies, take an already dark and brooding character, and somehow, make everything that’s going on in the world around him, even darker than he is, as if there was no sunlight or hope in the everyday world.
I believe that the majority of Americans, Conservatives, have always had respect for human life.
However, we live in a time in our country where Traditional American ethics and values, including our Christian Faith, have been ridiculed and mocked by the Left and their Power Brokers as being antiquated, restrictive, ignorant, and even, bigoted.
And the majority of the movies which Hollywood has expectorated out in the last few years have reflected this skewed and intolerant view of Traditional American ethics and values.
For example, movies like Redacted, about the Iraq War, which Americans shunned like a Yoko Ono Concert.
When a movie is entertaining, and doesn’t try to run down our country, or teach anti-Christian or anti-American views and values, people turn out in droves, like they did in the case of “The Avengers”.
Americans are looking for another John Ford or Frank Capra, but instead, Hollywood’s giving us Tim Burton and Rob Zombie.
Kingsjester's Blog 
Yeah, movies are a symptom of the problem not the problem. But I do agree with him here.
“I’m in the minority, but I don’t li”ke comic book movies. They’re not my cup of tea. What happened to pictures like How Green Was My Valley or even From Here to Eternity? They’re not making those kind of movies anymore.
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There isn’t a new idea in Hollywood…just remakes of remakes and Hollywood will continue to make these movies until the public decides to stay home.
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hear hear KJ
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Now that the initial shock of the Aurora shootings has passed, what can we expect from Hollywood and its siblings? Simply? Clandestine major damage control. We have already seen their fierce campaign hustling victims’ supporters back into theaters. We have already witnessed good people expressing joy in rejecting the notion that they should turn away from movies. Friendships solidified while attending violent entertainment are paraded before us, approved, and put up as examples of acceptable comraderie. We are being taught to fervently support the rights of those who choose to beautify insanely evil acts on screen, in the name of some perverse definition of freedom.
The campaign, presented with an intentional air of kindness, is deceptive. It’s based on capturing and sequestering our minds for purposes of exploitation by those involved in every aspect of the industry – and wants to make us feel good (if not charitable) about participating in the process. They are trying to deceptively sear into our conscience that their way – promoting violent and abusive entertainment (and any product or substance that distorts reality) – is the way to go. They mean to steer us to decide for ourselves (preferably in a formal way) that supporting these things is the acceptable choice, and choosing to avoid them is evil. They are counting on our ignorance, habits, and fear, and on our minds being changed to counsel ourselves into acts of questionable morality. They want us to freely will ourselves to go down that path. We hear their voices saying, “It is good”. The truth is the exact opposite. In a nutshell, fantasy that abuses human dignity “wants to be” established as the new reality. That would be a problem, indeed.
Now there is an international scramble for valuable territory and Hollywood does not want their opponent to set a foot where it cannot be removed. A war of moralities is in progress. People are realizing that getting comfortable with abusive fantasy is not satisfying their very souls. Instead, it is disturbing them. They are questioning whether it is joyful or even fun any more. Mom and Pop are involved, not liking what they see. They are antsy about having immorality shoved in their faces at their own expense. They are livid about having been manipulated into joining with forces they cannot justify now, and are driven to freely choose another path. They are confused as to what is real and what is fantasy, and about what activities are appropriate to deliberately spend their precious time on. Their lives are becoming withdrawn and actions misdirected.
Because of Aurora, many who have not thought of religion previously are beginning to question the moral implications of being entertained by watching acts of cruelty and injustice. Typical of war, the powerful entertainment industry ONLY wants us to express our God-given freedoms by choosing to patronize them – and viciously contradicts us if we choose otherwise. Industry representatives feel threatened, and rightly so.
How exactly will damage done by the massacre be managed by one of the most lucrative industries in the world? We’re not just talking about movies. Big Money trails are at stake. It’s impossible to follow them all. From Hollywood’s advocates, we can expect orchestrated programs and cheap psychiatric discussions that will try to teach us and other victims that going to movies to watch fictional, inhumane microcosms of life is desirable for its social value. Again, we will be taught that people who dismiss this valuable social perk because they defer to a sense of morality, are akin to anti-social sickos, not the other way around. Many will follow this teaching, having been intimidated into thinking it is sick to make any other choice.
Obvious facts will be blown off as “irrelevant” or “unnecessary” only to be purposely ignored – like the fact that scenes, though seemingly pleasant, are not indeed real. Damage control will ramp up use of subliminal manipulation techniques already in place (with the alcohol industry, for one) involving enhanced electronic sounds, edited pictures and voices, “inaudible” whispers and “indistinguishable” images meant to override normal brain function to elicit a desired response of submission. And, sadly, they may take the very words in this letter as guides in the campaign against good people.
Will we be able to overpower Hollywood’s mind manipulation campaign? One way we can do this is by avoiding the temptation to watch questionable shows on TV and theaters, knowing we will be subjected to it. Choosing good over wallowing through fields of evil will easily lead to our triumph. In the end, only the reality of Truth sets us free. Violating social and cultural conditions that are just and necessary to exercise true freedom has disrupted our sense of neighborly fellowship. It will lead to rebellion against the Divine Truth. Religiously, it is more blessed to be pure of heart, and to seek God. True joy and freedom come from experiencing Divine reality.
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After 50 years of:
political correctness, attacks on the idea of personal responsibility, attacks on moral and societal judgements and, attacks on life itself have led to a coarsening of American society. The adage, “life imitating art” seems appropo…
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